Carolina Miller is nothing like either her mother or her sister Ginny and Georgia. She's grateful toward her mother knowing very little of what their mother has actually done for them, but she's grieving and trying to move on from a history that lea...
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It was the day after Halloween, and Carolina was having the worst school day ever. She wasn't speaking to Ginny after the way she told her friends about her secret and her issues just because she "wanted to make them understand" when it was none of their business, and after she snapped at her family the night before like she was above them when she had done much wrong too.
At her locker across from berry tree where "the bro squad" was hanging out, Carolina kept seeing MAN and the boys looking at her like she was something broken and to be observed like she would break down any minute. She could even see Abby and Norah gossiping in whispers, and Brodie and Press making crude or obliviously offensive remarks while thinking they were funny, while Max, Jordan and Hunter kept telling them to back off and shut up. Ginny was ignoring her because she knew that Caro was pissed at her, furious even, and she didn't want to further the fight after the way Ginny had acted to her family the night before, the way she dragged her mother and sister down and snapped at her brother and refused to accept her aunt and cousin.
Annoyed, angry and overwhelmed, Carolina shut her locker and just walked away from their stares and whispers while they sat at their hangout in the hallway. She walked past the red zone where Marcus usually hung out with his friends, and just kept walking because she felt like she couldn't deal with anything.
Marcus watched her go in concern, turning to look at "the bro squad", glaring because he knew they were a huge part of why Carolina was reacting like that, not knowing about Maddie or Caleb yet.
Carolina walked into another hallway, far away from anyone she talked to. She was also overwhelmed about last night, having had to hurt herself to stop the pain inside and take control over it, even before the attempted break in by her newly revealed aunt and cousin, which was more than enough to push someone over an edge.
As all of this swam through her mind, her chest started to feel like it was constricting. She could feel breath start to be harder and harder to take in yet it seemed to rush out all too quickly. Caro tried to focus her breathing before it got out of control.
Students in the hallway were cleaning up Halloween decorations, and some boys were having fun with scaring the others around them.
Carolina closed her eyes to try and tune them out, though the sound of slamming lockers reached her ears as she tried to tune those out too. Everything was building and building.
The blood pounded in her ears. Her heart thudded in her chest. Her hands shook, and her feet tingled. When she opened her eyes, she found that her vision had disfigured, as if she were looking through a fish eye lens. She had to get away. She couldn't stay there any longer, yet she couldn't find the will to move her feet. She clenched her hands into fists and her nails dug into her palms. Breathing was getting harder and harder as seconds ticked away. As if she had just ran a marathon. She had tears burning in her eyes that she was unable to stop, her chest growing tighter as bile rose in her throat. She raised a hand to her throat as she felt like she was being choked, a pins and needles feeling trailing through her arms. The more as the attack went on, Carolina felt detached from the world and herself, experiencing heavy derealization and depersonalization.
